Valmik Thapar’s new book once more salutes the tiger and Ranthambhore. Prerna Bindra is moved and envious.
When I first came across this book and leafed hungrily through it in search of an extravaganza of tigers in their rich, beautiful kingdom of Ranthambhore, I was seized by one powerful emotion: envy. For a conservationist (a member of Generation Next, as Valmik Thapar kindly calls us) a lifetime spent with tigers — not just snatched moments from “safari” jeeps as is the curse of the present, but a privileged peek into the tigers’ secret lives (The Secret Lives of Tigers is the title of another of Thapar’s books) — is the stuff dreams are made of.
It’s not just that, within the three-odd decades that this book spans, the politics and governance of conservation have changed dramatically. “To be welcomed into the world of the tiger,” and to be allowed a look into Project Tiger’s early years, when the programme was fired with passionate commitment (partly due to the strong support that Indira Gandhi gave it), is an invigorating experience when compared with the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust, political apathy and even antagonism that conservationists must battle today.
Tigers — My Life is the extravagant expression of one man’s love affair with the tiger. It is the history and story of a national park where this affair blossoms and is nurtured, and it encompasses the territory of the tiger and the policies that rule it. It is also a tribute to a unique man, Fateh Singh Rathore, who is the genesis of this remarkable life.
I will not focus on Fatji (as he was affectionately known) for not only is it painful to think that he is no longer with us, the memory of his forceful personality makes an objective critique very difficult. All I will say is that this book is a fitting tribute to the man who created the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, as we know it today, and also inspired many conservationists, including Thapar and yours truly.
The value addition in Thapar’s books is usually historical perspective. This one has its share of that. One intriguing nugget it throws up is the possibility that lions and tigers once shared this habitat and that they were probably around together until early in the 19th century. The Mughal emperor Akbar, this book says, camped in Ranthambhore Fort for over a year; Thapar also cites Akbar’s successor Jahangir’s memoir, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, which records that the emperor enjoyed a falcon hunt in this area.
But, of course, the part I find most fascinating covers Thapar’s early years in the reserve. This section serves as a record of the successes of Project Tiger in its initial years: “Tigers bounced back. Nocturnal tigers were becoming diurnal. Fateh brought peace to the tigers,” he writes.
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I am particularly enchanted by the “tigrine” encounters. Such as: “[We] crept along a ridge face and peeked below to find Padmini [a tigress named after Fatji’s daughter] and her cubs lit up by the morning sun.” Or: “I was sipping coffee on the terrace of Jogi Mahal, when suddenly a tiger bounded out of the grass, killed a doe, and rushed back to the grass to feed.”
The strength of this book is the remarkable natural history that it showcases, but there is another achievement as well. It provides a chronicle of the tiger conservation effort from the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi years through the tiger tragedy of the 1990s. “[A] rude shock was in store for us in 1992,” Thapar writes, “when a poacher was arrested with a tiger skin. India’s live tigers were being killed to meet the demands of an ever growing Chinese market for bones for traditional medicines.”
Thapar goes on to explain the politics of the tiger, the success and failure of conservation under various prime ministers, forest ministers and chief ministers, the frustrations of sitting on government committees, the tragedy of Sariska and Panna (both of which reserves lost of all their tigers, presumably to poachers), the controversial Tiger Task Force, the promising yet turbulent times under the last minister of environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh. In a way, this is an insider’s view and perspective of the politics that govern tiger conservation in India.
But beyond the murky politics with which conservationists must always contend, this book is a joy. It contains about 1,200 pictures, of tigers as well as of the diverse wildlife of the park. There are extraordinary encounters (my particular favourite is the pictorial sequence recording a mother bear facing down two adult tigers to protect her cubs), a record of the individual tigers of this reserve, the highs and the lows of the conservation effort; in these photographs can be seen the glory and turbulence and despair that those concerned with the fate of the tiger have experienced since this country took the amazing and visionary step to save what is arguably the world’s most charismatic animal.
This 430-page heavyweight volume comes at a price. Go for it, if your pocket will allow. And for those sceptics who complain about the number of tiger-related books (Thapar himself has written no less than 20) this one is akin to the 21-gun salute owed to the topmost ranks of royalty.
TIGERS — MY LIFE
Ranthambhore and Beyond
Author: Valmik Thapar
Photographs: Fateh Singh Rathore
Publisher: OUP
Pages: xiv+ 418
Price: Rs 3,950